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Saturday, June 26, 2010

Sketches Only for Now: Working on a New Children's Book Story Idea

I'll be posting mostly sketches and figure drawings for a while, not finished illustrations. I've started working on a new children's book story idea and that involves a lot of behind-the scenes work (storyboard, character development, pacing, color, sketches, etc), months or even half a year worth of work, depending what other projects might come up in the meantime.

The new idea is absolutely and undeniably something I want to illustrate. I've been thinking of a new story for a long long time. The problem is that I think in images, what I want to do, colors, objects, themes, places, but I have trouble with coming up with an exciting story that has all the components of a successful story: begining, middle, the end, twist, tension, resolution.

My husband Ben Wish decided it's time to try to help me out. While he is a really really good writer and he is already working on his second novel (for grown ups), I wasn't quite confident that he could come up with a children's story for me.

We decided to start with a long list of things that I like to illustrate. Then, he promised to come up with few stories for me. Well, he started writing this first story and read the beginning of it to me and I just was completely in awe. The story is so incrediblely unique and has a perfect amount of fantasy in it, something that is sooo important to me. So we started discussing the story, how it can unfold, how the conflicts could be resolved, the characters, the scenes. I think two of us came up with the perfect story for me, the one I can't wait to illustrate. The story literally made me bounce off the walls with excitement.

Well.... Now it's time for really hard work to make this story work and make the publishers fall in love with it.To be continued...(in a year or two, who knows?)